This last part of the Childhood Stories I’m going to talk a bit about my teenage years. About one period in particular. After this post I have a lot more to talk about, but it will not be a part of the Childhood Stories. So incoming: New subjects and new title. But first: My life as a teenager. From now on I’m going to use names in these posts. The names won’t be the real names of these people, though. All names mentioned are fake names of real people. Except for my own name, obviously.
When I was still a little Meggie at primary school, I had a girl I hung out with, Dahlia. Her parents were friends with my parents when my mom was still okay. When our parents didn’t really talk to each other anymore, we still kept contact. I sometimes went to her house during lunchbreak or I played outside or at her house after school. I don’t know if we always really liked each other, but it seemed a convenient friendship to the both of us. She was very dominant and I was okay with that at the time. She just told me what to do and I liked that, because I didn’t have to sit at home being bored in my filthy house.
When we both went to high school and I moved to the emergency shelter and she moved to another village, our contact stopped. When I was 15 or 16 years old we started to talk again and Dahlia asked me to come over to hang out with her friends. There was a festival in her village and we decided to go there. Before we went to the festival she let me meet her friends. They were all very nice to me and I really felt so welcome. I don’t think I ever felt like this before that day.
Because of the issues at home, I learned how to lay low and not attract any attention. I didn’t want to add to the problems at home, so I made sure my parents never had to worry. When I had problems, I dealt with them myself and I never really learned to talk about stuff or learned to get help. This is still a very difficult thing for me to do. Because I wanted to blend in all the time, I didn’t really have groups of friends (guys and girls) so when I met those people at the day of the festival, it was all like totally new for me. I didn’t really know how to react and I didn’t know how I was supposed to befriend them.
There were two guys. They were the complete opposite of each other, but they turned out to be brothers. Both brothers decided to flirt with me. At first it was just one of the two, Kenny. He was flirting very discrete and I think nobody noticed. I probably didn’t even notice it myself at first. At some point we decided to take a walk on the festival site together, while the rest of the group was hanging out in some sort of empty market stall. Whilst walking Kenny turned to me, said that he liked talking to me and then he hugged me. In that hug we shared our first kiss. It was nice and lovely and sweet. We went back to the group and pretended that nothing had happened. I think his brother, Timo, knew something did happen, because he was suddenly focused on me. He was openly flirting with me, hugging me, touching my neck and my shoulders and my face. Completely out of nowhere, he kissed me. In front of everybody. In front of his brother. I didn’t want to make a scene, I didn’t want to stand out…I just wanted to be liked. So I went along with it. I just wanted the group to like me. I wanted to be part of their group.
After I got home, Dahlia messaged me, telling me I was a slut. She found out about me also kissing Kenny and said I wasn’t welcome anymore. I felt awful. I fucked up. I know I did the wrong thing, but I didn’t do it intentionally. I wanted to apologize, but didn’t have any info of the brothers. The only thing I knew was that they were named after famous musicians from a famous rock band and I knew their parents were massive fans. So…I did some googling and found their parents website. They did tour bookings and management for a couple of (cover)bands. I decided to send them an email to ask for Kenny’s contact info. Trust me: I know this is weird and too much, but I did it anyway.
My reaching out and apologizing was very appreciated by Kenny and we started to hang out. I also apologized to Dahlia and I was welcome in the group again. It didn’t take long before Kenny and I got into a relationship together. It pissed Timo off and he didn’t spend time with the group that much anymore. I tried to apologize a bunch of times, but he didn’t let me. When he did hang out with us, he completely ignored me. And when he didn’t ignore me, he made mean comments. It hurt me, but I knew it was something I couldn’t change at the time.
I really loved my time with the group. The main group was like 12 people, but there were a lot of subgroups with people of the main group and other people. We hung out every weekend and almost every day during holidays and did all sorts of things. We sometimes went out to small alternative music venues and even went to some concerts. Most of the time I went with Dahlia, Kenny and Lars. Lars was one of Kenny’s two best friends, I think. The other one was Darren. Lars was nice, Darren was a dick. I never really liked hanging out with him. Darren was like…the boss of the group. Everybody listened to him, but he was a complete idiot. I never talked with him outside of the group.
At some point Kenny and I broke up. I will talk about that some more in another post, but the reason for it is not relevant for this one. After we broke up, I was still part of the group. We still hung out every weekend, but I always felt like I was a visitor in the group, even though I was very welcome. I started to have more one on one contact with people from the group and became friends with Keith. We shared a lot of our stories with each other on msn. It wasn’t shallow like most of the contact I had with people from the group, it was much deeper. At some point he told me about a suicide attempt he once did. I don’t know why, but I was instantly drawn to him. I never saw him alone, there were always other people around. Because we had a lot of parties at and with other people, we talked about having a party for two. I told my parents we had a party at Dahlia’s, so I could stay the night at Keith’s place. It was such a good night. We stayed up and talked and hugged and kissed. It was so nice and I was so into this guy. He was also into me…for a little while. After three months he dumped me, because he liked someone else.
It was pretty hard on me, because I never liked a boyfriend this much before. I will probably talk some more about it in another post. Anyway…the group knew it was hard on me. I was totally into this guy from the start and I was pretty depressed when it ended. It was in this period that I started to harm myself. I never told anybody and I don’t think people knew. The first few times I used a razorblade and just cut myself to see the blood. The cutting just didn’t give enough relief and it felt like a cliché thing to do and I didn’t want to be a classic emo. At some point I was in the shower and I had an itch on my chest. I started scratching and noticed I was scratching the soaked skin away. It got red and I was so fascinated by it. I kept on scratching and little red spots started to appear underneath my skin. Like little drops of blood. Doing this and watching my skin change, gave me such a relief. The day after I did it the wound started to change into some sort of abrasion. It was an open wound and the skin around it was very red. Because my clothes rubbed against it the whole time, the wound got infected. Even though it hurt like hell, I knew I was going to do this more often. I liked the buildup of the pain and the wound. It was unhealthy, but it helped me. And it still does, sometimes.
When I was dumped by Keith, the group was very nice to me. They wanted to cheer me up and I very much appreciated that. When I was with Keith, some of the friendships I had with people from the group started to fade. When we had broken up, those friendships started to come back again. It was nice. Keith didn’t really hang out with the group anymore. I did finally get the chance to apologize to Timo and my friendship with Kenny also got better again. They were just friendships, though…I know what you’re thinking! I did have a little bit of a reputation in the group. I pretty much acted like a slut in between the relationships with Kenny and Keith. It wasn’t like I wanted to be a slag, I just didn’t want to say no when someone wanted to kiss me. So I never said no. I kissed with half of the guys in the group during that period. I wasn’t really planning on doing the same when me and Keith broke up, but I guess some of the group members thought differently.
At some point we started to have movie nights with the group. One of the nights was at Darren’s place. Because I always had to leave at 23.00 or 23.30 to catch the last tram, I missed a lot of fun times when I didn’t stay over. We were having a lot of fun that night but only started to watch a movie around 22.00. I said I couldn’t watch the whole movie, because I had to go home on time. Darren said I could stay over and half of the group was convincing me to do it. Some of them also said they’d stay over, so that made it easier for me. I still didn’t like Darren so I definitely didn’t want to sleep there all by myself. Around 02.30 people started to leave. Not just some people…all of them. Nobody stayed over. Nobody. I was there all by myself, with Darren. I cant remember his parents being home either. His little brother was, but he already went to bed. Darren showed me his room, showed me the spare bed (couch, I believe) and said I could sleep in that. He walked towards me, gave me a hug and started to kiss me. I didn’t really push him away, but I tried to end the kissing. He then got in the bed that I was supposed to be sleeping in and he asked me to come lay next to him. I said I didn’t want that, but he wasn’t going anywhere. For some reason that I can’t recall, I couldn’t get into his bed either…so I decided to lay next to him. He started to touch me and I pushed his hands away. He wasn’t giving up and he had his mind set on having sex with me. I didn’t know how to stop him, so I said I was on my period. It worked, because he immediately stopped and went to sleep.
The next morning was awkward. I was glad when his little brother woke up and when some friends came over. We went to The Hague and Darren and I ignored each other the entire time.
The next weekend I tried to call and message some of the people from the group, but nobody answered. I then called Lars and he answered the phone while he was with some of the others. I asked him about the plans for the weekend and he said I wasn’t invited and I wasn’t welcome anymore. I heard Darren talk and laugh in the background and I knew it was over. I lost an entire group of friends in just one day. Five minutes after that phone call Simon called me. He was also a friend from the group, but he was different. He was more neutral and never part of any of the drama. He called me to say he wasn’t okay with how they handled things. He offered me to go out with him that weekend and so we did. We went to a small alternative music venue three Saturdays in a row. It was nice, but it stopped after those three times. He was still friends with them and they weren’t planning on having me join them again…so it ended. I don’t blame Simon at all, though. I really appreciate what he did for me. After all this I was down and humiliated and I guess I never really trusted new friends or new groups of friends after that. I always expect everybody to leave me. To go away. To quit on me. The situation scarred me and I think I still haven’t fully recovered from it.
